Inventive Thinking

There’s a tendency for marketers to celebrate the number of followers they have on their social media channels. But striving for follower growth usually isn’t an effective strategy to grow your business. Sure, you need to grow your followers and subscriptions – but they must be the right kind of people, or you’re wasting your…

Your customer has changed. Whether you’ve been in business ten years or forty, understanding today’s customer buying behavior is a whole new ballgame. Expectations have shifted, so if you want to sell to these new customers, your approach needs to change too. Sure, change is frightening, especially in sales. Knowing you can’t hook your customer…

When you’re struggling to grow your business, effective marketing is one of the most efficient ways to get it back up and on its feet. But you can’t always afford to hire an experienced marketing specialist because, frankly, people are expensive. Plus, one person may not have all of the skill sets and experience required…

You may have heard about TLS or “Transport Layer Security” (also commonly referred to as SSL), a security protocol that ensures communications between your website and server are encrypted and can’t be intercepted. With big companies reporting data breaches seemingly daily (everyone from Facebook to Target to Verizon at this point), it’s no wonder your…

If you align your sales and marketing teams, they become an unstoppable force. Marketing influences how people think and feel, building and nurturing relationships—and relationships drive sales. Period. Your sales team spends 80% of their time with the 20% of the customers who are ready to listen. Your marketing team, on the other hand,…

As the saying goes, the “rubber hits the road” at the point in time when a salesperson is in-front of a customer and moves to quickly communicate why they should buy. Salespeople need the right tools at their fingertips as they initiate relationships, build trust with customers and prospects, and when they close the sale.…

Leave the pre-made eggnog on the grocery shelf… a top-notch, home-made eggnog is not much work. Here’s how to make your own eggnog: Booze: Bourbon, brandy or rum are the typical choices. You don’t have to go expensive either beacuse the booze flavor is complimented by the flavor of the eggnog, so it all tastes…

When you see an old friend, do you give them a handshake or a ‘bro hug’? Of course, if you’re under 30 years old, you give them a hug to let them know that you’ve missed them and you appreciate them. It’s more intimate than a traditional handshake. What’s a ‘bro hug’? It’s a visible…

It seems like anything successful has a secret formula, proprietary technology or “secret sauce” behind it that makes people talk about it. Marketing is no different. The secret sauce of successful marketing is the message. It must command the attention of its target audience, get them to think and feel something – and ultimately like,…

There’s an inherent mystery around the art and science of optimizing a web site for search. The optimization process changes nearly every week as Google works behind the scene, changing the rules to make their engine’s results more search friendly and relevance-centric. For SEO specialists, it’s like playing a soccer game where the goalposts keep moving…